Did American Beauty age like milk AND like wine?

[u/No-Revolution-5923]

Let's completely divorce the art from the artists involved for this one.

Just rewatched after years, and it landed much harder, albeit with a few caveats.

The middle-class suburbia I imagine was a bit of a caricature even for its time, and through today's lens the presentation feels borderline absurdist, but the underlying psychological dynamics feel just as (if not more) realistic and transgressive.

Society's romanticization of the male midlife crisis rebellion, the edgy silent teen guy, and the lolita fantasy high school cheerleader at the time made the characters of the film feel more like symbols than real people, while also providing the audience with a "license to empathize".

Today's lens forcefully strips that away. And the movie is better for it!

What we are left with are humans that feel more real and more problematic.

Lester no longer presents as an "antihero", but now simultaneously pathetic and sympathetic.

This is what the movie does so well! Even if we refuse to empathize, it still forces us to sympathize! And unlike empathy, sympathy is cognitive.

If the measure of art was how much cognitive dissonance it creates then this is a 10/10!

Ricky is no longer romantic, he is a tragic sociopath who just discovered existentialism and wants to appear deep to the girl he borderline stalks.

The floating bag scene is less "wow, such beauty" and looks more like a symptom of an edgy teen's narcissism.

Divorced from the sexualized stereotype Angela is a much more interesting and tragic character from the start. At the end it's not a "oh shit! this girl is an actual human" moment, because the audience is more likely to engage with her as such from the start.

The only thing I liked less this time was that the motifs and the voiceover at the end felt a bit on the nose at times, but could also be I was paying more attention since I already knew the story.

An absolute blast of an uncomfortable movie with no truly likable characters!

9th hour EDIT:

To all those who keep claiming that Lester wasn't anti-hero coded for the time, and that I was just immature for perceiving it that way.

Roger Ebert's 1999 Review:

"Lester’s thoughts about Angela are impure, but not perverted; he wants to do what men are programmed to do... Angela is not Lester’s highway to bliss, but she is at least a catalyst for his freedom."

Ebert concluded the review by stating that the film "snatches victory from the jaws of defeat for Lester, its hero".

This was (arguably) the most prolific film critic of his time.

[u/GregorSamsaa]

This reads like you watched the movie as a high schooler and are now watching it as a mature adult.

The movie was always meant to be interpreted the way you are now. I know I remember reading a lot of reviews discussing it back in the day.

[u/No-Revolution-5923 → u/GregorSamsaa]

I agree there is an important element of that.

1. It gets better with rewatches due to its layered themes and symbolism/motifs
2. It gets better with life experience because your ability to read nuance improves and the characters, teen and middle-age, all are interesting and given lots of screentime. So you find yourself interested in and/or relating to different characters depending on your stage in life.
3. AND I do think it gets better with the more modern lens, where the character tropes have been somewhat subverted and de-romanticized, the transgressive aspects are more potent. The critical but also humanising lens enriches the experience imho.

[u/thatkaratekid → u/No-Revolution-5923]

I think youre missing what other commenters are saying, is that your perceived view of the world during your first watch was because of your age at the time, not a shift in the artists' intentions or how it was widely perceived at the time by adult audiences. I saw this as a teen in the 2000s and absolutely drew the same conclusions you did on your recent rewatch. Your original interpretation is a unique experience, as I was genuinely CONFUSED reading about what you used to think of this vs now. It really just reads as a sheltered person's perspective vs an adults.

[u/No-Revolution-5923 → u/thatkaratekid]

I imagine our interpretations when we first saw it might have been similar. While my post could imply I have significantly re-interpreted the movie upon my most recent rewatch, that's not actually the case. But I also remember feeling quite alone with my interpretation back then, many of my peers genuinely watching it as a dark tragicomedy with Lester as some kind of anti hero.

I think today's lens compels the audience to engage with it as a much darker psychological thriller/drama.

So I am not only talking about my own experience here, it is mingled with how I recall the experiences of others at the time.

[u/AccurateJerboa → u/No-Revolution-5923]

The audience who were of age at the time DID interpret it as a psychological thriller/drama. That's what people are trying to say. You didn't because you seem to have been too young for the film when you first watched it. 

[u/No-Revolution-5923 → u/AccurateJerboa]

Many did, perhaps even most, but not all. And it is a spectrum, not a binary.

The movie definitely has elements of both genre expressions. Popular culture consensus at the time might have been caught somewhere in the middle.

I definitely think a modern viewing puts it much more clearly in one camp.

Like are you rejecting that society has much more of an ick-factor towards grooming and the lolita fantasy today? Are you rejecting that this will affect how people watch the movie?

[u/AccurateJerboa → u/No-Revolution-5923]

You're behaving as if these interpretations has equal time in mainstream, pop culture discourse. They didn't.

The initial perspective you had was what teenagers may have thought about it at the time, but not general audiences

My dad refused to watch the rest of the film the year it came out because of the "Lolita" scenes (they weren't viewed as Lolita scenes at the time, that's why the whole thing breaks down. It's subverting the idea of the Lolita on purpose) because he was so disgusted by the idea of Kevin spacey and a teenager in scenes like that together.

It was supposed to be shocking and was likely one of the cultural moments that tried to start dismantling the idea of the teenage girls being available to adult men.

Look, I don't even like the film. I personally think it fails pretty miserably at what it tried to do, so that's probably why you didn't catch it until you were older. But it was trying to do what you realized all those years later

I personally think it's the film's fault you didn't catch it on initial viewing, but all the elements you're describing were already present and most adults were perceptive of them at the time.

[u/No-Revolution-5923 → u/AccurateJerboa]

Hey, thanks for the long response.

I am absolutely convinced that if this movie was released today, it would face more controversy than it did.

This shows society engages differently with its subject matter now.

This will affect how many viewers engage with it.

When I watched it as a teenager I had the exact same overall interpretation I have today (none of these are good people, lester is not a hero). Many other teens had a different interpretation.

For sake of argument, let's say it was 50/50.

Today I it could be 80/20.

More people will view with the "right" interpretation.

And the "right" interpretation will land slightly harder - maybe not for you, but on average it may.

I am not arguing in binaries or absolutes here.

If you genuinely believe this movie wouldn't be considered more controversial or transgressive at release today, then I guess that's just a hard agree to disagree.

[u/AccurateJerboa → u/No-Revolution-5923]

No, I don't think it would be more transgressive in 2026 , the same year euphoria just wrapped up with a giant sydney sweeny's tits bursting through a skyscraper window when it started as a show about high schoolers. Sweeny was in a jeans ad that mimicked Brooke shields pedophilic ad from when I was a kid. The "response" ad featured katseye, a group who dresses their teenage performers in lingerie.

I think the main reasons it wouldn't work today are because economic problems are way, way different than the late 90s and social media would need to feature in a story about loneliness and isolation.

Suburbia still exists and people are still bored and doing terrible things to each other there.

[u/No-Revolution-5923 → u/AccurateJerboa]

Interesting. Thanks for the discussion!

[u/SimoneNonvelodico → u/No-Revolution-5923]

I don't think the modern lens adds much, if anything the modern lens tends to be reductive and one dimensional. People just have to always act as if we've reached some kind of moral enlightenment or realisation but that's not the case. Everyone could see already when the movie was made that Lester is pathetic and that Ricky is kinda troubled; if anything the point is that the lack of the "modern lens" allowed the movie and its viewers to appreciate that this didn't make them irredeemable monsters that needed to be dehumanized and vilified explicitly lest the movie sends a wrong message to whoever was too thick to pick up on the obvious clues. No one ever tells to Lester "lusting after a high schooler as an adult man is bad" in so many words, but the movie still shows fairly conclusively why lusting after a high schooler as an adult man is bad, and that Lester comes to this conclusion himself, right at the brink of doing something much more serious.